ATTN REHABBERS! re. Canadian fall/winter releases

[iwonka]

Please be careful when offering advice to Canadians, especially for the Montreal and Quebec city areas of Quebec. Our winter is much colder and arrives much sooner than the that of the US Northeastern states. In the fall while you still have green leaves on the trees in New York state our trees here are not just multicoloured but already half bare.

So, based on our experience and the advice of the Canadian well known rehabbing facility Hope for Wild Life (based in Nova Scotia) we have developed a protocol for the fall releases.

1. Starting in early September all fall release babies should have a well insulated nest - since by that date the babies will keep this nest for the whole winter.

2. All babies 12 weeks or younger by the end of October should not be released. They have to be overwintered indoors or, if necessary, could be placed outside in a release cage with a very well insulated nest. Food and fresh water must be provided to them every day.

3. All fall release babies will need the food support of their humans for their whole first winter.

[Rhapsody]

That sound about what I tell the people here in the USA.......
so I guess we are all on the right track.

[island rehabber]

Valuable information, iwonka - thanks very much.

Sounds as if Montreal is nearly a good month ahead of us when it comes to fall/winter. Here in southeastern NY, on the coast, we enjoy leafy trees well into November - - especially maples and oaks. I feel safe releasing kids up until around Nov 15, which this year I will be lucky if I can do, I'm so late!
Since I visit my release site daily with goodies and then 3x week all thru the winter, I can truthfully state that my releases do fine and I have never found anyone frozen to death.

Just an idea of what Scarsdale, NY looked like this past week:

[Anne]

Thank you for the reminder. Same information that I pass on and I live in Florida! Sometimes we forget to look into that high right hand corner when er answer a posting, not everyone lives in our neck of the woods..